


Children of Strife

by Merfilly



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Community: spook_me, Gen, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5079268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maleficent first learns aught is amiss by Diaval falling prey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Children of Strife

**Author's Note:**

> [Artwork by Brian Froud](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook%20Me%202015/Bri-twilight_zpswuomywbj.jpg.html) and [Artwork by Dusan Markovic](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook%20Me%202015/013-amazing-concept-art-dusan-markovic_zpsynkehfke.jpg.html) were my prompts.

_**And they lived happily ever after** is possibly one of the greatest lies told within the tale of how the faerie and the humans ended following my coronation. We were a united queendom, yes, with the Moors accepting me as readily as the people of my my father's city. But there was poison in the lands, steeped there in every drop of blood and ichor spilled in the long years of confrontation._

_Every once in awhile this became a problem for myself and Maleficent to deal with. That was what a queen and her protector did, after all._

* * *

Maleficent cradled Diaval's true form against her breast, eyes gone narrow and green in rage, for her friend, dear and faithful, had been found in dire straits. Only that his strident call was known to her ears more firmly than that of any other raven within the Moors had given her the ability to find him, hopefully before it was too late. Angry as she was, she had to fight to keep her magic healing instead of vengeful, but her eyes swept the ground for any clue as to why he was in such dire straits.

There were no marks upon him, but his feathers had lost all luster, and his breathing labored mightily. Her search for clues yielded only a slender leaf-shaped arrowhead, gleaming greenly against the soil. While she forced her magic into Diaval, infusing him with strength, she crouched to gather it, and then launched for her abode to keep Diaval safe.

+++

Aurora knelt beside the now sleeping, and human, Diaval at Maleficent's bower. "He sleeps, fairy godmother. It was wise to push him to the larger form, as it seems to have dissipated whatever the cause of this was."

"I found no mark in his corvid form, and none shows upon the man," Maleficent said. "I felt a magic at war with mine as I succored him." She then pulled forth the small arrowhead, on its snapped shaft. "I found this, yet there is no sign it was used against him. Nor is it metal." She passed it to Aurora to be inspected.

The queen accepted it, carefully inspecting it at all angles. "Jade, I'd say, without a trace of blood or ichor on it. Yet I do believe it was recently dropped where Diaval was found, because it is not dirt encrusted."

The faerie protectress could not help but smile, her rage subdued just by Aurora's presence and the fact Diaval would recover. To see Aurora apply such intelligence to the situation… well, her Beastie was better than most humans in all ways.

"I will call Balthazar to begin a search through the Moors," Maleficent decided. She then gave a wry little look at Aurora. "With my queen's blessings?" she teased, making Aurora burst into laughter, nodding the whole while.

+++

Phillip was on the road between the city and the Moors, when he heard a slight noise, just barely within the grip of the Forest. He moved in that direction, his eye falling on one of the peasants from this border region, gasping for air, and an ethereal form just within the shadow of a tree.

"Villain!" he decried, seeing that one of Aurora's subjects had come to harm. He laid his hand to his sword, intending to vault down… and he fell to the ground, as his life began to seep away from him toward the half-hidden figure. His breathing grew labored, and the darkness was stealing into his sight, cutting off everything but the sound of skittering on leaves, approaching from behind a different tree.

+++

It had been Goliath's strident screams that guided Balthazar from the entry to the Moors, out onto the road toward the city. There he saw two humans, fallen, as the mighty steed stood guard over one. Seeing this, recognizing the steed and the colors of the royal human, the forest guardian through back his head and called to his brethren, both the mobile warriors of the army and the sheltering trees, their rooted cousins.

The message was passed swiftly to Maleficent's abode, where Aurora still watched over Diaval. Both women, human and fae alike, rushed to leave. Aurora merely held herself poised for carrying, and Maleficent snatched her up as she launched out of the bower. Any other time, Aurora would have been thrilled by the fast flight to the outer reach of the Moors, but for now, her heart hammered. Phillip was as dear a friend as any human could be in her short life as Queen.

"Another arrow," Maleficent said, finding the jade-tipped thing none too far from the fallen peasant. She gathered it, and then crouched beside the low-born human, as Aurora was preoccupied with Phillip. "This one lives, though barely."

"Phillip too," Aurora said. She then caught Goliath's reins, calming him. "Help… oh!" She smiled as Balthazar broke free of the trees, anticipating her need. "Thank you. The other as well?" she inquired, once the guardian had lifted Phillip and laid him over the back of the horse. In short order, Balthazar had the peasant over the rump of the horse, and Aurora did what she could to be sure neither would fall off. 

"You will take them to the castle?" Maleficent asked, seeing Aurora point the horse's nose that way. 

"I think it best, fairy godmother." There was only a hint of questioning in the words. 

"Yes, but Balthazar will see you to the true border. You have guards there; use them for escort," Maleficent said. "We must take no chances, Beastie, for you are the only hope of peace our lands have."

"You fret too much, but I agree," Aurora answered.

+++

Maleficent turned her attention to the mystery as soon as she could not see her Beastie, trying to find any trace or track of the attacker. The small copse of trees revealed nothing, and so she ranged further out… noticing that the leaves behind where they'd found the humans were disturbed in a pattern she could not quite place.

Looking from that spot to the copse gave her the notion that the arrow she'd found had come from the place where the leaves were disturbed. Yet both humans had fallen facing more toward the copse, and bore no injuries at all.

"Strange," she murmured before beginning her path, on foot, toward the Moors proper. Maybe the trip would show her something that she could not find from on high. As she walked, she called her magic loosely around her, letting her connection to the Moors feed her more information than her eyes alone could find.

As she neared the main 'gate' of the Moors, where the Forest parted for ease of entry, her ears caught the sound of leaves crinkling under weight, being scattered before scittering feet. She waited until she was almost within the opening before she whirled to confront her follower.

"I wish my arrow back, Lady, so that I may continue my hunt," the being said, as Maleficent's eyes took in a faerie type she had never in all her years seen before. Six armored and spiked legs, jointed high up near the body, a tail that matched the legs in design, and then the body rising up into a faerie in naught but armor that was cut for freedom of the arms and wings alike met Maleficent's purview. 

"And I should just give it to you, you who is skulking along the lands I protect, when a threat exists upon those I call my own?" 

The bow in the strange being's hand twitched to one side, even as the wings fluttered with… indignance? Maleficent read anger and shame alike on those features.

"I am not your enemy, Lady of the Moors. That is the festering of old wounds, soaked into the land and claiming its due!" The archer met Maleficent's eyes, her own orbs sparking with green and gold alike in a way that was unmistakably familiar to the protectress of the Moors, having seen them in the water reflections.

"You… are a child of my magic, are you not?" Maleficent asked, wondering just when she had touched this one so directly.

"So I believe, Lady, for I found new life one terrible night as magics warred, between love for another and an awful curse," the archer replied. "My spider had been near, for I was but a small pixie, living near a cottage where wonderful blooms and butterflies could tempt me into play. My sleep was disturbed as the magic rolled out… and when I woke again from its passing, I and my spider were one, with a feeling that we were meant to guard the land."

Maleficent flinched, remembering that night. How desperately she had tried to break the curse herself, to spare her Beastie, for there was only love in her heart for the innocent human. "And you never went near to the pixies or other faeries?"

"Nay, Lady, for I am unlike any other, and there was much fear in the hearts of all," she answered, not without some loneliness, for no pixie liked to be solitary. "Then I learned of the Baen Sidhe, stealing breathe from both humans and faerie alike. So I have hunted, trying to protect the peace."

A Baen Sidhe! Of course! No mark, and the labored breathing, for such things stole the life itself away!

"Together, we hunt, and then… you will come home to the Moors, to know the peace of the home you protect," Maleficent told her. "Do you have a name?"

"I chose Spinnette," the archer answered, moving forward slowly. Maleficent held out the arrow she had most recently taken.

"Then welcome home, Spinnette, and let us find this Baen Sidhe swiftly, before any die of their encounters."

+++

The Baen Sidhe held physical form only as she was feeding on life, being no more than the spirit of ill deeds. Always before, the creature had escaped Spinnette's arrows by leaving off her attack, but when Maleficent herself was there as both bait and ally?

Maleficent had been crossing from the road to a smaller copse that she had favored in the past for watching the road. She felt the first insidious wisps of energy touch her as she fell out of a moon beam into the darkened shadows. Her instinct to fight was held at bay, trusting in the strange new fae to be the one to end this. Maleficent was to hold the Baen Sidhe, trap it in physical form, and that would finally allow Spinnette to end it.

"You think to trap me?!" hissed out from the Baen Sidhe, as the thoughts bled into Maleficent's magic. 

The protectress of the Moors could not let her get away! It might be her Beastie that became prey next time! Gold and green energies alike reached out, seeking to grapple with the Baen Sidhe. Where was the archer?!

 _Between love and an awful curse_ came to Maleficent's mind, and she wondered. Were the two bound, with the evil just slightly stronger, as it had been that night with Aurora's curse?

"There is no need to be shaped of evil alone!" she cried out, strengthening her magical restraints on the ethereal Baen Sidhe. "What creature were you before this happened?"

The ghostly one struggled, refusing answer, and then poured all of her soul-draining magic loose at once, to try and take all that Maleficent was in time to get free.

Maleficent fell to the leaf-littered ground as that onslaught stopped, cut short by the tip of a jade arrow piercing the Baen Sidhe's darkened heart.

"You could not have saved her, Lady, for she was the curse and all of the dying made whole," Spinnette stated clearly, once the backlash of magic faded.

"And you?"

"Time will tell."


End file.
